Denver Art Museum gets much-needed design revitalization

by arslan_ahmed | November 24, 2022 10:00 am

[1]

By Ally James

Renovating and expanding an art museum designed by a well-known Italian architect comes with its share of design challenges. For the Denver Art Museum, an institution of visual art, it was a necessary revitalization effort to better serve the increase in foot traffic, which has now grown to more than 800,000 visitors annually.¹

One of the structures from the museum’s late 20^th century expansion is the Martin Building, formerly known as the North Building. It is a two-towered, eight-story, castle-like gallery designed by Italian modernist Gio Ponti and completed in 1971. The design was a sharp departure from the temple style often associated with gallery architecture.

“If a museum has to protect works of art,” Ponti once famously noted, “isn’t it only right that it should be a castle?”

As part of a larger campus renovation, the museum’s leadership announced plans in 2016 for a significant overhaul of the Martin Building to keep pace with the increasing patronage. The goals were straightforward: modernize the building to meet the demands of today’s museumgoers and align it visually and functionally with its campus neighbors, the Hamilton Building and the Denver Central Library. Lastly, preserve the integrity of Ponti’s original creative vision. Transforming those goals into a reality, however, was no small feat.

Stephanie Randazzo Dwyer, principal at the architectural firm Machado Silvetti in Boston, says “Ponti employed unusual and incredibly striking combinations of triangular shapes and curved shapes in everything, from the exterior form
of the building, to a one-of-a-kind stainless steel entrance portal, to huge elliptical scoops cut out of the top of the building.”

“Our vision was to hew as close as possible to all of Ponti’s details, while upgrading technical systems, increasing vertical transportation capacity, upgrading the weather envelope, and ensuring accessibility throughout the building.”

The Boston firm designed all the improvements to heighten the gallery’s offerings and enhance visitor experience. This included the new addition, Anna and John J. Sie Welcome Center, an elliptical structure with a glass facade, housing guest services, two dining options, a special corridor, and a second-level event space which expands the functional versatility of the museum.

[2]

While the welcome center enjoys an abundance of natural light, the design also called for the clever use of interior artificial light. One of Ponti’s central themes was light play: “I asked the sun and the light and the sky to help me,” Ponti quipped of his design.

More than a million reflective glass tiles cast light patterns across the exterior of the castle’s towers, while the seemingly randomized fenestration mixes various window shapes and sizes into positions, adding to the light play inside and strategically protecting artwork from the deleterious effects of sunlight.

[3]

Creating light from above

A vast, glass-clad corridor connects the welcome center to the Martin Building’s gallery halls, offering a panoramic view of the castle’s northern tower. Designers used the ceiling in this space as a creative canvas for light play.

By applying the look of Ponti’s fenestration to the corridor’s ceiling, the design team created an orderly but scattered pattern of squares of artificial light to shine through the plenum, coupled with massive rectangular skylights in an echo of the tiles and windows on the tower’s exterior.

The effect provides downward illumination, while drawing the eye upward to the skylights framing the tower in picturesque form. “We designed the ceiling as a perforated surface with an integrated lighting system,” says Dwyer. “The perforations in the surface essentially allow light to pass through the ceiling from a grid of LED [light-emitting diode] lights above. The perforations are all across the Main Hall ceiling, but are denser at important areas, such as the door to the restaurant or the elevator to the event space. When the holes are denser, the light is brighter, and thus the visual effect is like clouds of light marking points of interest—a sort of subtle overhead way-finding.”

Since traditional ceiling products were insufficient for an installation of this scope, the design team tapped a building products manufacturer to custom engineer a new configuration of lighting integration with fire-rated medium density fiberboard (MDF) for this project.

The first challenge, as to the ceiling product, was finding a structured core material for the ceiling panels which would provide the level of acoustical comfort required for a museum, while allowing light transmission from behind the panel. Fully engineered MDF lay-in panels were ultimately selected and perforated with hundreds of crisp, cleanly finished square holes to create the randomized pattern.

The perforated panels were backed with a translucent acoustical light-diffusing fabric to allow the light from fixtures, within the plenum, to emanate. To prevent unwanted light from penetrating through spaces between the panels, the design suspends the panels from a lay-in lift and shift suspension system and couples them with specially crafted splines to provide near seamless joints to seal the system.

The result is a spectacular array of lights which is visually stunning and functionally practical, providing light, delight, and acoustical performance for this busy throughway.

[4]

Expanding functionality

The ceiling design ingenuity carries through to the welcome center’s second-floor events space.

With the center’s elliptical profile, the events space ceiling needed to maintain a fluid shape and provide excellent acoustics to suit large gatherings. The design team relied on a malleable ceiling product which resembles plaster but offers superb sound absorption.

[5]

The design team and its manufacturer partner custom engineered the material into trapezoidal shapes and pieced them together in a puzzle fashion, with recessed lighting at every adjoining corner. The combined tiles suit the structure’s unique elliptical shape, culminating in a large recessed circular section and complete with a halo of artificial light at the space’s core.

“The ceiling for this kind of designed flexibility is a major technical and aesthetic challenge,” Dwyer says. “It had to meet the technical needs of many different room configurations for gatherings, each with their own unique requirements for air handling, rigging, lighting, audio, and visual systems.”

The panels were placed in a customized concealed aluminum suspension system which features a torsion spring mechanism to facilitate panel placement, enabling a quicker installation and full downward accessibility for maintenance and repairs. Special butterfly clips secure various fixtures within the plenum to prevent it from being entangled in the hanger wires and rods suspending the grid, all while providing a monolithic visual on the ceiling surface below.

“Besides what the ceiling looks like for those inside, the all-glass walls mean the event space ceiling is seen by everyone who is outside,” explains Dwyer. “It had to be functional and iconic for both the interior and exterior.”

[6]

All about the art

In the main castle section of the Martin Building, the gallery spaces serve a singular purpose: highlighting and celebrating a world-renowned art collection. The custom ceilings played a role in this objective as well.

The intent for the ceilings in the galleries was to recede and contribute to a sense of calm. With their matte, non-reflective black surface and exceptional acoustical control, the acoustical panels paired with a coordinating black suspension system provide a sleek, modern look while contributing to the ambiance of the gallery.

A resounding result

After more than a year of planning, testing, creating mock-ups, and developing design solutions, the resulting ceilings in all areas of the museum are true testaments of design ingenuity paired with creative installation.

“We began working early in the design process and brought to the table many layers of challenges with regards to maintenance, accessibility, and the complex integration of lighting,” says Dwyer.

Notes

1 To learn more about this project, visit certainteed.com/denvermuseum[7].

Author

Ally James is a Toronto-based product marketing manager for CertainTeed Architectural. With nearly half of her 15+ year career focusing on high-performance ceiling and wall systems, Ally has established herself as a category expert, and is always happy to lend her expertise in acoustical and specialty ceilings.

Source URL: https://www.constructionspecifier.com/denver-art-museum-much-needed-revitalization/

---